


Ruins of Memories

by Robin4



Series: Ruins & Battles [4]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Belle with magic, F/M, Outtake from Ruins of Camelot, Rumplestiltskin as the Sorcerer, Season 5 AU, chapter 27.5, rumbelle fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-17
Updated: 2015-11-17
Packaged: 2018-05-02 01:16:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5228336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Robin4/pseuds/Robin4
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After their house is burned down, Belle and Rumplestiltskin try to heal one another's wounds.</p><p>Takes place after chapter 27 of <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/4163451">Ruins of Camelot</a>.  Not really a standalone story, but fluffy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ruins of Memories

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted on tumblr, but I figured I'd put it here for everyone else to read.

Jefferson was no expert practitioner of magic—at least not of the normal sort—but he knew enough to be worried.

He also knew enough to pull out his phone to call Regina—who he still didn’t like, but tolerated for Grace’s sake, given how Henry was one of Grace’s best friends—when Belle tried to stop the magic that was draining her husband dry.  Jefferson had only just managed to pull Regina’s number up from his contact’s list, however, when Rumplestiltskin suddenly seemed to break free of the magic.  Then Belle screamed in pain, and Jefferson rushed forward a few steps before Victor grabbed his arm and dragged him to a halt.

“You can’t!” Victor looked worried, though, too.

Jefferson swore, but his string of obscenities was cut short when a sudden light show intervened; Rumplestiltskin had sat up, his hands coming together and then ripping apart like like he was tearing the very fabric of the universe.  Jefferson felt the strange chill of power running up his spine, but it wasn’t like anything he’d ever encountered before, despite his long years of experience with the former Dark One.  This felt different, somehow, not just lighter and less grating on the nerves.  No matter what it was, though, the burned out ruins were bathed in blue, then green, then a weird golden light seemed to sparkle across what was left of the house before all the magic vanished.

“Belle!”

He really had never seen Rumplestiltskin move so fast, particularly not since he’d become human again.  But before Jefferson could even take a step forward—much less shake off Victor’s arm—Rumplestiltskin had gathered Belle in his arms, cradling her face and looking more worried than Jefferson could ever remember him seeming.  “Sweetheart, what were you thinking?”

She was thinking that she didn’t want to lose you, you idiot, Jefferson almost said out loud, but he managed to restrain himself to a snort.  He did exchange a droll look with Victor, who at least hadn’t had to watch these two idiots dance around one another in the Dark Castle.  How long had it taken them to figure things out?  There were times when Jefferson had contemplated locking them in a room together, except for the fact that he knew Rumplestiltskin would only have teleported himself out in flustered embarrassment.

“I wasn’t going to lose you.” Belle’s slurred whisper echoed Jefferson’s thoughts all too perfectly, and he laughed out loud.

“Oh, Belle.”  He’d never heard Rumple sound quite so relieved, so he supposed that was an improvement.  And he might as well not call Regina, come to think of it.

Victor spoke up from his right.  “Happy, now?  You’ve been bitching about them for years.”

“Hey, you didn’t have to watch them pretend that they weren’t in love back home,” he protested, but Victor only shrugged.

“You think we might want to tell them to get a room?”  Victor gestured at where Rumplestiltskin was busy calling Belle foolish and brilliant (which at least the moron saved by adding the last part), and the two lovebirds were kissing.

Jefferson couldn’t stop his grin.  “Hey!” he shouted, making the pair startle apart. “You do know you have an audience, right?”

Belle giggled, but Rumplestiltskin turned red, which made Jefferson stare.  Then blink.  And then stare again.

“Are you seriously blushing?” he couldn’t help asking.  “Like, really blushing.  Holy crap, someone pull out their phone and take a picture.”

“Jefferson.” Rumplestiltskin’s growl was one of warning, but he just shot his friend a cheeky smile.  Poking the Dark One had been one of Jefferson’s favorite past times, and now that Rumple wasn’t quite so evil, he was likely to put up with a lot more.

“He’s right,” Belle put in, still sounding dizzy.  “You are a little red.”

“Not helping, sweetheart.”

Victor, of course, had to step forward and ruin the moment.  “You guys all right?” He offered Belle a hand. “I’m not exactly, you know, into magic, but that looked kind of rough.”

Now it was Belle’s turn to blush as she climbed to her feet.  “I think I’m not much of an expert, either.”  She glanced down, and Jefferson sensed something that he was missing.  “Or, um, not with things like this.”

“You can say that again,” Rumplestiltskin grumbled as he got up, brushing his suit off.

“You do know that the suit is probably ruined, right?” Jefferson couldn’t help asking.  The expensive gray fabric was stained and he thought the jacket was torn, too; Jefferson had become nothing if not a connoisseur of fine clothing during the curse.  After all, he’d had little else to do other than make hats and try to sort his two maddening lives out, and he liked looking nice.  It was one thing he and current-Rumple seemed to have in common.  Neither of them would be caught dead in jeans.

Rumplestiltskin just gave him a glare before wrapping an arm around Belle.  “I figured, yes.”  His attention, however, was definitely riveted on his wife.  “Are you all right, sweetheart?”

“I think so,” Belle said softly.  “I feel...different. Like I haven’t eaten in too long, but not hungry.  Almost like there’s a weird hollowness I can’t identify.”

“That spell tore some of your magic out of you.  The effect is temporary, but it’s still going to burn for a bit.”

Belle glanced at him worriedly.  “What about you?  It—the spell—it had you trapped a lot longer.”

Rumplestiltskin shrugged.  “More to pull on, I suppose.  I suspect I’ll recover faster than you.”  He gave Belle a hard look.  “Don’t do that again, all right?  Leaving aside the fact that I’ll never talk you out of impulsively jumping in to save someone when you think they need saving, using magic when you aren’t trained to is dangerous.  You could hurt yourself and the person you’re trying to save.”

“It worked.”  She looked a little mulish, and Jefferson started to wish he wasn’t there for this discussion.

“Once.”  Brown eyes met blue, and Jefferson was a little surprised that things around them weren’t lighting on fire.  The two of them stared at one another in stony silence for a moment, and Jefferson couldn’t decide if they were about to start fighting or kissing.

“Um, are we gonna sift through any of the rest of the wreckage today, or do you two want to call it quits?” he asked before things could get ugly—or worse, he supposed.  I wanted to lock them in a room, not be a voyeur and watch!

Only then did the pair seem to remember they had an audience, turning to look a little guiltily at Jefferson and Victor.  Not to mention the three dwarves and Ruby, who must have arrived during the magical fireworks. 

“It can wait.”  Rumplestiltskin’s face closed off again as he looked around.  “I think we should head out, don’t you, Belle?  You’re going to be tired after that.”

“And you’re not?”

“One of us knows how to manage the price of magic here.”

“Wow, so not getting involved in the marital dispute here,” Jefferson cut in, turning to the rest of the crowd.  “Let’s roll, guys.  Nothing to see here.”

Leroy started to say something, but by the time Jefferson turned back to ask Rumplestiltskin if they wanted help tomorrow, the Golds had vanished.

* * *

 

“I feel fine.”  Belle crossed her arms as they appeared in the foyer of the Sorcerer’s House—there was no way that Rumplestiltskin was going back to Granny’s after that—and he could see from the stubborn set of her jaw that she was telling herself that she felt fine, even if that wasn’t actually true.

“You won’t,” he predicted, earning himself a glare.

“I did what I needed to!”

“Of course you did.”  Don’t yell at her, Rumplestiltskin told himself.  He’d made enough of a hash of things in the past by trying to shout Belle down; it only ever had failed, and in the end, it just made her more stubborn.  Just like the time I yelled at her to stay in the shop and away from the damned pirate.  Yeah, that worked out well for me.  Taking a deep breath, he spread his hands placatingly.  “I don’t want to fight.”

“Then don’t tell me I was wrong.”

“I wasn’t going to.”  Belle glared at him, and Rumplestiltskin sighed.  After a moment, he stepped forward and placed his hands gently on her shoulders, praying she wouldn’t pull away.  “Your methods could use some work, sweetheart, but how can I argue with you saving me?”

For once, he’d found the right thing to say, and Belle nodded.  “I was a little, um…”

“Reckless?” he finished for her, and she shrugged.

“It worked.”

“Yes, and you could have hurt yourself—or gotten yourself killed—the way you did it.  There’s a vast difference between reading about magical theory and doing magic,” he tried to explain, fumbling for the right words.  Every other student he’d taught had first and foremost been a power user; they’d harnessed emotion to draw upon their power, and simply willed the magic to do what they wanted.  But Belle was an intellectual; she studied and she read, and she would never be someone who would draw on raw emotion unless she had to.  So, trying to teach her that way was out—she’d always try to fall back on what she’d read.

“I think I learned that today,” Belle admitted softly.  “It was harder than I thought it should be. I’ve read so much, and I’ve made lots of potions.  I can always find the right spell to do, even when it’s for someone else  I guess I thought it would be easy now that I know that I have magic of my own.”

A soft chuckle wormed its way out of him.  “Everyone has to start at the beginning, you know.  You can’t just leap to the advanced levels—which countering something like that nasty little trap is—without building an adequate foundation, first.”

“So how—” Belle staggered, and Rumplestiltskin barely caught her as she almost toppled.  She swayed drunkenly, though, and he quickly became the only thing keeping her on her feet.  “Is this...is this that tired you were talking about?”

“Right in one.”  He wasn’t the Dark One any longer, which meant he only had normal human strength to depend upon—except for the fact that he could still use magic to augment himself if need be. So, Rumplestiltskin just swept her up in his arms, making Belle giggle a little breathlessly, and carried her out of the foyer and into the bedroom they’d shared on their honeymoon.

He had no idea where any other beds were in that damn house, after all, and it was creepy enough to have the house close the door behind them after it turned the lights on.  Belle probably figured that was Rumplestiltskin’s magic at work—and maybe it was, given the nature of the Sorcerer’s House—but if that was the case, he hadn’t consciously done that.  Still, that was a matter for another time.  Belle was more important, and she’d grown very pale by the time he laid her down on the sheets.

“You still in there?” he asked softly, and she nodded. 

“I’m not really tired.  I’m just so drained.”  Belle grimaced.  “Except for the way my adrenaline is pumping wildly.”

“Still?  Nevermind, don’t answer that.  I know how using magic for the first time feels.”

Her smile was tired.  “It was so long ago for you.  You still remember?”

“You never forget something that changes your life like that.”  Rumplestiltskin sat down next to her, dropping his jacket on the floor as he did so.  Jefferson was right, and it was ruined.  But he didn’t really care.

“Is...is magic going to change my life, too?”  Belle bit her lip.  I can’t stand to see her so worried.  How could I have ignored the way I hurt her before, when just seeing her worried breaks my heart?

Rumplestiltskin knew that there was a wide gulf between the man he’d been as the Dark One and the man he was becoming, but he often didn’t care so much about that...except where it affected Belle.  She meant the world to him.  Although part of him still couldn’t understand why she stayed, or how, three weeks after he’d come out of that coma, their relationship was stronger and better than ever, he did still understand that she wasn’t going to leave.  Gently, he reached out for her, and Belle immediately sat up, nestling herself against his chest as he wrapped his arms around her waist.

“I think it already has,” he answered truthfully.  “Can you honestly say that becoming a sorceress will change much for you?  You already filled that role, more or less, while I was gone.”

Belle grimaced at the memory.  “It might be nice to not always have to look things up in a book.”

“Blasphemy!” Rumplestiltskin couldn’t resist saying, and they both laughed.

There was an exhausted quality to Belle’s laugh, however, that put Rumplestiltskin on edge.  Not exhaustion, not really, he thought, concentrating on the frayed threads of magic he could see surrounding his wife.  She would be fine; he hadn’t been lying about that.  But while Zelena’s little trap had strained his magic and probably given Zelena a store of power that Rumplestiltskin very much didn’t want her having, it had done a lot more damage to Belle.  The damage wasn’t anything that wouldn’t heal with time...but he still didn’t like the way it looked.  He was an original power, the only human original power, whether he was comfortable with that fact or not.  While he still couldn’t identify the source of his wife’s magic—a worrisome topic for another day—Rumplestiltskin did know that Belle did not share that with him.

“You feel horrible, don’t you?” he asked softly.

“It’ll get better, right?”  Ever the optimist, Belle; he hugged her close.

“I think I can help with that, if you let me.”  Now it was Rumplestiltskin’s turn to bite his lip.  “There’s...something I can do, but you’ll have to trust me.”

“Of course I trust you.”  Her answer came so quickly that it took his breath away.

Rumplestiltskin had to swallow hard.  “I don’t deserve that.”

“Rumple.  Don’t start with that.”  She twisted to look him in the eye, and he saw nothing but love and trust in her gaze, which warmed him in so many ways.  “Now, tell me what you have in mind.”

“I can give you some of my power, if you want.  It’ll link us together, temporarily.  In ways we aren’t already, I mean.”  He took a deep breath and forced himself to make more sense.  “This power of mine is extraordinary, Belle, and there’s plenty to spare.  I can fill that void in you until your own magic recovers.”

“How long will that be?  Will it hurt you?”

“A day or two.”  Rumplestiltskin hesitated before answering her next question.  His first instinct was to lie, to tell her that it wouldn’t hurt at all, and to dismiss the potential dangers—but he’d learned a thing or two, hadn’t he?  “And...it shouldn’t hurt me.  Not so long as you don’t want to.”

Belle cocked her head.  “What do you  mean, so long as I don’t ‘want to’?”

Don’t even think about it, Merlin piped up immediately, and Rumplestiltskin really wished he could swat the old sorcerer aside.  True Love or not, you can’t afford to take that risk.  You know what you are!  With an effort, Rumplestiltskin ignored his predecessor and answered:

“I’ll have to open myself up to you, magically speaking.  You could, if you wanted, turn my magic against me while we’re connected.”

“I would never!”

“I know that.”  He touched her face.  “That’s why I’m offering.”

“Oh.”  He could see that his trust touched her deeply, and Rumplestiltskin felt like his heart had grown ten times in size.  So many times, Belle had trusted him without Rumplestiltskin ever feeling comfortable enough to really tell her the truth, but he was done with that.  Whatever else he was going to be in the future, be it good, evil, or something in between, he was going to be a good husband for Belle.  This is me, choosing you, he didn’t have to say.  They both knew.

“Will you let me?” he asked.  Even in his days as the Dark One, Rumplestiltskin had never wanted to take away her choices, her free will.  Belle’s determination had always been one of the things he loved most about her.

“All right.”  She gave him a look.  “So long as you promise to tell me if I do something wrong, or if I hurt you even a little.  I don’t want to.  Ever.”

“I promise.”

Slowly, Rumplestiltskin pulled Belle back into his arms, closing his eyes as she snuggled into his shoulder.  He didn’t need to do something more conventional, like a potion or putting his hands on her head; their bond ran far deeper than a mere physical connection.  He planned to use their True Love as the conduit to flow some of his magic into her.  So far as Rumplestiltskin knew, this kind of spell had never been done between True Loves, and the oddly curious manner in which he felt Merlin’s attention focusing indicated that he was right.  Such spells were dangerous, probably too dangerous; a sharing of magic was almost akin to a sharing of souls, yet what was True Love, if not that already?

“Ready?” he asked softly, and Belle nodded.  Rumplestiltskin bent to kiss the top of her head, and then—slowly and carefully, because he couldn’t bear the idea of overwhelming her—opened the floodgates of his magic.

He only dared allow the flow for a moment or two; Belle gasped almost immediately, and he felt her shiver in his arms.  But it wasn’t a bad shiver, and Rumplestiltskin kept the flow down to a level he knew Belle could manage, feeling his soul and hers tie themselves together just a little bit closer.  The feeling, the extra connection, was extraordinary, and he could tell from the way that Belle’s arms tightened around him that she felt it, too.  That almost made him want to continue the connection, to never break the conduit, but not doing so was far more dangerous for Belle than it was him, so Rumplestiltskin stopped.

“Wow,” Belle breathed after a moment.  “I feel...really good.”

His smile came hard enough to hurt his face.  “Good.  I’m glad.”

Belle looked up at him again.  “I love you, you know.”  Her fingers traced his cheekbones.  “I know you felt it—just like I felt your love for me—but I want you to hear it.”

“I love you, too, sweetheart.”  His smile turned crooked.  “Even if you are prone to jumping in head first without any thought to the consequences for yourself.”

“So...are you going to give me a lecture, or are we going to do something more fun?” she asked him, and her playful tone sent a shiver down his spine that had nothing to do with power.

“Um, I, uh, think we should take a shower, first.”  How this woman still managed to turn him into a stuttering mess from time to time completely befuddled Rumplestiltskin. 

Belle peered up at him, batting her eyes.  “Is that an invitation?”

Yeah, the look in those blue eyes went straight to his groin.  “Damn you, woman,” he growled.  It was a perfect storm; Belle was being playful, and she’d just done magic.  And saved him with it.  Did she have any idea what she was doing to him?

“What?”

She couldn’t be that innocent on purpose, could she?

“You’re doing this on purpose,” he grumbled.

“Doing what?” Belle sat up, looking confused.  Rumplestiltskin sighed and just decided to give in.  He always wound up giving in to her, anyway; he might as well just do it now and give up all pretenses at preserving his dignity.

“You have no idea how sexy I find the idea of you and magic, do you?”

Belle looked startled.  “You do?”

“Shower.  Now.”


End file.
